How Patterns work

Patterns only reads what you log. It never fills a gap with a guess, so the more of a day you log, the more it can say about that day. You choose how much to log; this page explains what Patterns does with it.

What counts as a day

Patterns reads full days, so today is not in it. It looks at the last 14 days.

A whole day is a day with both ends logged: the night that ended that morning, and the night that began that evening. A whole day tells Patterns when your child woke up and went to bed, so the naps in between can be counted without a guess.

A day with only one nap logged could be a day with one nap, or a day with three naps and two that were not logged. Patterns cannot tell. That is why it prefers whole days.

A typical day

A typical day draws the usual wake-up, naps and bedtime as one bar.

• It appears once 3 days have sleep logged. Until then, the page says what it is waiting for, and how many of those days are logged.
• When at least 3 of the 14 days are whole, it reads the whole days only. If you never log nights, it reads every day with sleep.
• A usual time or count needs at least 4 days that agree on it. When they do not agree, the card says Naps vary day to day.

The heading says how many days the card comes from. “Last 14 days” means all of them. “9 of 14 days” means it read 9 days and left out the others.

Until Patterns has read a week of whole days, the card says it is still getting to know your child.

What’s changing

What’s changing has a card for the bedtime, the number of naps and the longest night stretch. Each card compares the last 7 nights with a week 3 to 7 weeks earlier.

• Each reading needs at least 4 days or nights in each week.
• A bedtime change is shown when it moved by 15 minutes or more, and a longest stretch when it changed by 20 minutes or more.
• A new number of naps is shown after 4 days in a row with that number.
• When nothing changed, the cards say what held steady, and the heading changes to match.

The first change also shows on the Patterns card in Insights.

When you log less, Patterns does not call it a change

Families often log less as the weeks go by. A night logged in one block looks like a longer stretch, and a skipped nap looks like one nap fewer. So Patterns compares two weeks only when they were logged about as fully: a week with less than half the entries of the other week is not compared. Entries for your child count; pumping does not.

Young babies

A newborn’s sleep is spread across the day and the night, so a usual bedtime or nap count would not mean much yet. Patterns draws a newborn’s days, but it starts to name a routine or a change at 8 weeks. If your child was born before the due date, the 8 weeks count from the due date. Add it in More, Your Family, Children, your child, Birth Details.

Get the most from Patterns

• Log whole days when you can. Waking up and bedtime matter most. A few whole days are better than many days logged in part.
• Log the same way each night. If you log night wakings on some nights and not on others, the longest stretch moves with your logging, not with your child.
• Skip days when you need to. A day with nothing logged is never read as a day without sleep.